Solar Ascent

Alarms blared across Sola’s bridge as her shields absorbed yet another round of Durathisian weapons-fire. As the largest craft in the fleet, Dustin had her dancing along the line, trying to keep her shields in between weaker vessels and their enemies to buy the defence **** as much time as possible to whittle down the numbers of craft that were approaching Earth.

The hostile fleet’s advance hadn’t slowed in the seconds since Meli had announced that further vessels were incoming; the new ships hadn’t arrived yet, whatever reinforcements their foes had were clearly large in number and taking their time to drop back into real space. Another blast struck Sola’s side defences and the alarm became more jarring as Sammie pushed her craft into a roll to allow the damaged shields time to recover.

Ozone from overheating electronics filled the air as the crew pushed Sola to her limits, the vast craft ducking and weaving in between sending out blasts from her massive main gun. All around her, the fighter craft twisted between the two opposed forces to do what they could; their torpedoes having long since been fired in the early stages of the battle. A massive explosion off to one side drew Dustin’s attention - one of the outer system stations that hung in Jupiter’s orbit had taken a direct hit from one of the Durathisian battlecruisers and was now falling towards the planet.

As Dustin watched, reactor implosions tore the massive structure apart, and he was thankful that Axworth had long since evacuated all the people who lived on humanity’s most distant Solar outposts. “Weave signals show incoming in ten seconds, husband!” Meli called, snapping his gaze back from the burning spires of the orbital to the black void of space that marked the jump point into the Sol system.

Space rippled as Sola’s front shields took a direct hit from two of the Durathisian vessels. The blast was too much for even Rye’s hand tweaked system; the shields failed just before the energy weapon shots faded, a line carving across her hull and breaching multiple decks. Emergency bulkheads closed; Dustin’s eyes flickered from the battle in front of him to the display on his armrest he’d set up to show the number of crew on board. To his relief, the number remained constant - while there would no doubt be injuries, nobody had been sucked into the cold vacuum by the damage to Sola’s hull.

As his eyes returned to the main screen, Dustin blinked. The Durathisian fleet was angular, claw-like and a mixture of black and grey. They’d integrated some Fractal tech, judging by the way their hulls repaired from any damage, and flew through space on dark-red glowing reaction engines. But behind the Fractal line, the new ships that had jumped into the system were of a different sort. Were they transport craft? Some form of landing ****?

The new vessels were a pale silver - a colour that seemed to shimmer erratically against the pitch black of deep space - and in contrast to the clawed shape of the cruisers looked like a set of batons surrounding an elongated lightbulb. They were, in a word, sleek - and when they began to move it was with an eerie blue glow from their engines. The craft fanned out from their arrival point, forming what looked like attack waves…

From the lead ship of this new fleet, massive beams of light fanned out. Each of the three batons fired it’s own charged lance, the brilliance temporarily distorting Sola’s display as the energy weapons struck the nearest Durathisian cruiser, carving the hostile vessel almost in half. Before the alien craft’s regeneration could kick in, a second smaller set of lances fired from the inner hull of the newcomer, the black and gray vessel sliced neatly into two burning chunks by the combined attack.

Dustin blinked; up and down the line, their attackers were being sliced apart by focused blasts from the newcomers - as he watched, the Durathisian flagship turned ponderously, it’s massive energy batteries locking on to one of the silver ghosts. The flagship’s fire spat out, energy and projectile weapons that had previously been directed at two, three or even more targets at once in the fight before now all focused on destroying the interloper.

Such was the destructive **** deployed that Sola’s scanners couldn’t keep up - the region where the silver ship had been descending into static for a moment before slowly fading back in. To Dustin’s amazement, the strange craft was still there - and he started to grin. In space, a short distance out from the hull of the silver vessel it was just possible to make out the fading green crackle of energy from a shield array handling the incoming Durathisian fire. There was only one fleet in space that would have shielding and look like that.

Emely glanced over at him, eyes wide. “Sir, the new ships… we’re being hailed.” Dustin straightened his collar and nodded at her to put the call through.

The screen flickered - and a stern looking Japanese woman in an admiral’s uniform appeared, staring at him. “Ambassador? Sorry to keep you waiting. Admiral Nakano, at your service. If you would be so kind as to have your fleet hold position, we’ll just clean up this trash and give you a proper escort to Earth.”

Dustin grinned and inclined his head. “My thanks, Admiral. We were having a bit of trouble dealing with them on our own.”

With a lightning-fast flash of a smile in reply, Nakano ended the call - and a moment later her ship’s weapons were firing again, the lances cleaving Durathisian craft into pieces in a tremendous display of destructive power. The human warships were something else - faster to turn, quick to move they slid through the alien fleet like prowling sharks, turning suddenly before lashing out with weapons that a quick glance at Sola’s sensors told Dustin were even more powerful than his ship’s main gun.

Despite their long exposure to human culture through their relationship with Dustin, the alien women on his bridge (his wife included) sat open mouthed as they watched a fleet that had been driving them back be torn apart by the new warships - a Durathisian fleet that on paper had been the match of any the council could muster without the added Fractal tech that powered it’s regenerative capabilities reduced to floating hulks without any seeming effort.

The Durathisian flagship managed to breach the shields of one of the human craft after a sustained barrage. As Dustin watched, one of the three outer batons spiralled away. To his delight, and no doubt to the Durathisian’s dismay, the ship merely turned and returned fire with it’s two remaining weapons. Shortly after that, the enemy flagship broke combat, it’s massive bulk accelerating towards the jump point.

Captain Rupert Spake of the mining barge Adriana had remained behind on his ship when the Durathisian fleet crippled the reactor. He’d held the craft together long enough for his crew to escape via the pods, then had jettisoned what remained of the power systems into the path of an oncoming cruiser - not that it had done much good. He’d been adrift since then, relying on fading batteries and limited gas-ejection propulsion to drift towards other similarly wrecked ships from the first wave of the attack.

When the new vessels had jumped into the system he’d thought he’d only lived to watch the **** of Earth - and then they’d attacked the Durathisian scum, carving a swath through the lines. He’d cheered to himself when that first cruiser went up. And now, they’d got them on the run - but that flagship was making its way back towards where he drifted. But, he hadn’t been idle…

After the fleets had swept past initially, before the newcomers had arrived, he’d managed to drift to where a fighter had been struck by point defence. It was one of the expedition fleet - bore the markings of the Solar Ascent on the side, humanity’s flagship. The alien weapon had ripped through the cockpit - poor pilot hadn’t stood a chance. But… it’d missed the launcher that had been hastily mounted on the craft’s underside. The still unused launcher.

Admiral Arok was incensed with rage. His face actually twitched into a grimace for the briefest of moments as he watched his fleet fall apart, his own battleship flying at speed to escape the primitives and their disgusting weapons. He would escape this wretched system, warn the rest of the Collective and return with a stronger fleet, one equipped to handle the kind of warships the humans had deployed. He would…

Rupert braced himself against the bulkhead, staring out of the ruined hull of the Adriana as the vessel came closer. He had no targeting - the computer was fried. He had no launcher - it’d been mangled. He had no idea if the warhead was primed or not. But, he’d always been good at shooting clay pigeons when he was younger, and this was basically the same thing. With care, he sighted along the torpedo, one hand gripping the makeshift switch he’d rigged to the missile’s rocket engine carefully. The Durathisian ship closed… closer… closer… “Take this, you alien fucks. And get the fuck away from my home.” Rupert pressed the switch.

The Durathisian flagship was going to escape. Dustin watched helplessly as it slid away - carrying with it all manner of combat data on the humans capabilities. He was pretty sure that between the orbitals and the new fleet most communications in and out of Sol space had been blocked, but when that thing got away their enemies would know all about the human war-fleet. There was nothing in range - nothing that could reach in time to stop it… He blinked. A single point of light, almost right on top of the flagship had come from the debris field near the start of the battle. It drifted erratically, as if it were uncontrolled - but at that distance, there was no way it could miss a hull on the scale of the Durathisian craft.

Rupert watched as the missile spun wildly towards the enemy, a grin on his lips. His oxygen reserve was failing, and he was pretty sure he’d be caught in the blast wave of whatever that thing was - but he’d struck one last blow before the end. “Wish I had a fucking drink” he muttered, before grinning as his improvised weapon struck the flagship - and detonated.

The weave torpedo hit the Durathisian craft head on, right in the middle of the claw. The gravitational wave as the weave-bubble formed rippled across the bridge; Arok had just enough time for his eyes to open wide as he realized exactly what had been so destructive against his fleet when the humans had only been fighting with transport craft and science vessels before it popped. The twisting distortion of space tore both bridge and half the main reactor apart, the most heavily defended part of the craft being ripped asunder before the Fractal hull defence could even recognise damage had been done.

The waves washed out, slamming into the Adriana. Rupert was thrown backwards against a bulkhead, his vision fading in and out as he watched the Durathisian craft list to one side - and behind it, the first lances from the human fleet firing as Earth’s warships caught up to their fleeing foe. “Fuckin’… got ya.” He muttered before he blacked out.

Some time later, he blinked his eyes open to find that instead of the afterlife, milk and honey he’d been expecting he was in fact in rather a great deal of pain, lying in a medical bed with blinding light overhead as a translucent azure woman ran a scanner over his cranium. Seeing he was awake, she frowned at him. “Don’t try and move, I’ve given you a muscle paralyzer to keep you from doing any more damage to yourself while we patch you up. Your mouth should just about work, but you’ve torn most of your muscles, broken about… seventy three percent of your bones, not to mention the blood vessels you blew riding out a weave bubble collapse and reactor explosion on that scale.”

Finding he could just about blink, Rupert managed to find his voice. “Where…” he began, but the woman sighed and turned, calling out as she did so. “Dustin, can you answer his questions please? I’ve got enough on my hands keeping this idiot alive, thank you.” The medic stepped aside, and a moment later Rupert found himself looking up at the concerned face of the head of the human defence. “Ambassador…?”

Dustin looked at the man lying in the bed - not that much older than Dustin himself, battered almost beyond recognition. If Sola hadn’t been flying at full speed, if Dustin hadn’t had Sammie take her fighter, the single vessel left in Sola’s hangers, if Bleu hadn’t been waiting in the hanger when she returned, the man’s body mag-clamped to her craft’s wing to save time… he’d have been dead. Taking a deep breath, he leaned forward. “Captain Spake? I’m proud to inform you that you’ve managed to become a goddamn hero - your launching that torpedo may well have helped prevent us from losing this war before it even began. Bleu’s going to patch you up, and then you’ll get a proper greeting - but for now? Welcome to the Solar Ascent.”